Stranger Than Fiction? Having People Live on Top of Branch Libraries

A group proposes replacing the Brower Park library branch on St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with a bigger library and housing.Credit
Jeremy Lange for The New York Times

The hunt for new ways of creating moderately priced housing in places with immoderate land prices has led housing experts in New York City to an unconventional thought: Why not tear down obsolete branch libraries and replace them with libraries that not only are bigger and better, but also have apartments built on top?

In Brooklyn, a community development group has proposed tearing down four deteriorating branch libraries and redeveloping each site — an undertaking that the group says could produce more than 30,000 square feet of new library space and as many as 200 apartments for low- and moderate-income tenants.

Meanwhile, Enterprise Community Investment, a national company that finances low- and moderate-income housing, recently completed an inventory of nearly every branch library in New York City, to identify those whose age, condition and neighborhood zoning might make them candidates for redevelopment to create housing.

“City-owned land is becoming more and more scarce,” said Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, the group that has been working to redevelop the four branch libraries in Brooklyn. “We have to look at every possible option for redevelopment — specifically, the things the city has control of. And it’s a win-win situation.”

Library redevelopment is one of several unorthodox approaches to producing low-priced housing that are cropping up in places where population growth and land costs have driven housing prices up. In New York and other cities, developers are collaborating with churches to redevelop church-owned properties, and with government agencies to turn parking lots into parking structures with housing on top.

In St. Paul, a developer, with help from Local Initiatives Support Corporation, or LISC, a major supporter of community development nationally that is also doing work in New York, replaced a small branch library with a new, 32,000-square-foot library, which opened in September, and a 98-apartment, mixed-income complex.

In Seattle, a community development group, with the support of LISC, approached the Seattle Public Library about adding 19 apartments for low-income families to a new branch library. The deal made it possible to increase the size of the library and cut the cost.

These developments are public-private partnerships that typically include government subsidies as well as grants or loans from banks and other financing sources to build the apartments. Where the library is on city-owned land, the developer can avoid the land-acquisition costs and instead pay the city for development rights. The city can then use that money to pay for the new library.

“This is a great opportunity to look at a resource that is in every neighborhood and that has the ability to generate additional housing,” said Rafael Cestero, deputy commissioner for development at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. He added, “You’re looking at pieces of property that have underutilized development rights, and libraries that need rehabilitation and expansion.”

For many years, New York City encouraged the construction of low- and moderate-income housing by doling out its once vast inventory of properties taken in tax foreclosure. But that supply of cheap land has been exhausted. Community development groups and developers of lower-priced housing, unable to compete with the private market, have begun searching for creative ways to find land.

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Four branches of the Brooklyn Public Library may be replaced.Credit
The New York Times

Ms. de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee said the library idea arose after a meeting last year with a member of the City Council who happened to mention the difficulties of finding money for the long list of repairs and renovations needed at many branches of the Brooklyn Public Library. Marrying libraries to housing seemed like an innovative way to meet both needs.

The Fifth Avenue Committee, which has a long history of developing low-priced housing in parts of Brooklyn, has proposed redeveloping the library branches at Clinton Hill, Red Hook, Sunset Park and Brower Park in Crown Heights. All four branches are in low-rise buildings dating from the 1960s or ’70s.

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“Ideally, this would serve as a model that can be replicated in Brooklyn and across the city, and really provide resources to the library that might otherwise not be available, and meet the mayor’s and the city’s goal of building additional affordable housing,” said Steven Schechter, director of government and community affairs for the Brooklyn Public Library.

Mr. Schechter said many of the library’s branches had suffered from years of deferred maintenance and needed things like new roofs, boilers and computer technology. (The Brooklyn Public Library, which is separate from the New York Public Library, operates 59 of the more than 200 branch libraries in New York City.)

Good candidates for redevelopment are what are sometimes called “bunker-style libraries” — unremarkable single-story brick buildings in deteriorating condition. They must be on sites with enough room for larger replacements, and in neighborhoods where the zoning allows taller buildings, making it possible to both increase the size of the library and add on, say, 50,000 square feet of housing or perhaps 50 units.

The Clinton Hill branch illustrates some of the challenges. The branch opened in 1974 in a low-slung beige-brick building on a handsome tree-lined block of taller houses on Washington Avenue near Lafayette Avenue. The library consists largely of a single room with cinder-block walls, partly empty bookshelves and an acoustic-tile ceiling studded with fluorescent lights, bathing the room in a desultory glow.

Library officials have estimated that the building needs about $3 million worth of capital improvements, including a new roof, a new boiler and an interior renovation. Last year, the system received no capital funds for the building, despite its request to the city, Mr. Schechter said. Under the Fifth Avenue Committee’s redevelopment plan, the library would double in size.

The Fifth Avenue Committee initially proposed building apartments as well as a charter school on top of a new library. But the neighborhood was considering a rezoning that would make have made it impossible to do both. So the current proposal includes only the school. Apartments as well as other community facilities are tentatively proposed for the three other Brooklyn library sites.

Kirk Goodrich, a vice president at Enterprise Community Investment, said his company had met with both the Brooklyn and New York Public Libraries. Enterprise’s recently completed survey of all the branch libraries in the city found library redevelopment possibilities in every borough.

Mr. Goodrich said it was too early to say how many units of housing could be produced.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Stranger Than Fiction? Having People Live on Top of Branch Libraries. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe